Carrier route record

UATYS→ORD

United Airlines · Knoxville to Chicago

Flights: 317
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on TYS to ORD earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 317 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 815 at 66.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's TYS to ORD record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 308 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.52%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.2%

Every carrier on TYS to ORD, 2,220 flights

These figures cover 317 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on TYS to ORD

United flew 317 of the 2,220 flights on TYS to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 86.4% on time is 18 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.4% to PSA at 60.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 66.7% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 60.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 834 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on TYS to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	317	86.4%	85 min	2.52%	A
Envoy Airthin sample	175	75.9%	57 min	1.71%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	79	70.9%	84 min	0.00%	C+
SkyWest Airlines	815	66.7%	110 min	2.94%	C
PSA Airlines	834	60.6%	113 min	6.47%	D−

PSA Airlines cancels 6.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 317 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's TYS to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 86.4% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on TYS to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202595 flights95.6%
Oct–Dec 202526 flights—
Jan–Mar 202688 flights83.3%
Apr–Jun 2026108 flights80.6%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.4% on time across 317 flights.

United on TYS to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 80.6%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 106 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.2%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 3,550 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
55%
Carrier
19%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,550 reported delay minutes.

55% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,962 minutes out of 3,550, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 475 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.0% on time across 316 flights, 25 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 25 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 317 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking United on TYS to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 317 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 86.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 308 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures